of Selborne 183 



LETTER XXXTV 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES EARRINGTON 



Selborne, May 9, 1 776. 



Dear Sir, 



.... "admorunt libera tigres." 



We have remarked in a former letter how much in- 

 congruous animals, in a lonely state, may be attaclied to 

 each other from a spirit of sociality ; in this it may not 

 be amiss to recount a different motive which has been 

 known to create as strange a fondness. 



My friend had a little helpless leveret brought to him, 

 which the servants fed with milk in a spoon, and about 

 the same time his cat kittened and the young were dis- 

 patched and buried. The hare was soon lost, and 

 supposed to be gone the way of most fondlings, to be 

 killed by some dog or cat. However, in about a fort- 

 night, as the master was sitting in his garden in the dusk 

 of the evening, he observed his cat, with tail erect, 

 trotting towards him, and calling with little short inward 

 notes of complacency, such as they use towards their 

 kittens, and something gamboling after, which proved to 

 be the leveret that the cat had supported with her milk, 

 and continued to support with great affection. 



Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a 

 carnivorous and predaceous one ! 



Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as a cat, of the 

 ferocious genus of Feles^ the viurtian leo^ as Linnasus 

 calls it, should be affected with any tenderness towards 

 an animal which is its natural prey, is not so easy to 

 determine. 



This strange affection probably was occasioned by that 

 desiderhim^ those tender maternal feelings, which the loss 

 of her kittens had awakened in her breast; nnd by the 

 complacency and ease she derived to herself from the 



